OCD cutting board marked with precise angles and measurements for accurate chopping

The OCD Chef Cutting Board is screened with fine, precise measurements so that you can cut all your food into perfectly even, perfectly angled chunklets.

THE OCD CHEF CUTTING BOARD (via Joshua)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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sdaris

It should be called the Perfectionist Chef Cutting Board. Perfectionism and OCD are quite different.
phlavor

This is one of those things that I wouldn’t necessarily buy but I kick myself for not thinking of first. I’m an avid cook who has skills on the chop and I’ve used those self healing mats for 20+ years for hobbies. I just never put the relation of the two together in my mind.
Floyd R Turbo

….channeling Phil Hartman’s Anal Retentive Chef from 1980s SNL.
- Teller
  
  Indeed.
  - Floyd R Turbo
    
    And I forgot to add… damn I miss Phil Hartman.
- Comedian
  
  Needs a cosy.
The Life Of Bryan

Everyone raves about my huge salads, but my girlfriend makes fun of me for â€œalphabetizing the lettuceâ€ and â€œpre-chewing the carrots.â€ This would allow me to really live up to my reputation.
Berk

That’s a really, really cool idea, and I’d buy one but…

It’s waaay too small at 9×12″. 12×18″ is my preferred size, easy enough to move, big enough to prep just about anything on.

Also, The really great thing about wooden boards is you can sand them down once they get completely knackered, and have a new board effectively for free.

Oh, and it doesn’t look like a proper end grain board, more like a pretty printed plank, not so good for knives, and will warp if you don’t look after it.
ebarrett3

What bothers me is that the disembodied hands (obviously ‘shopped) aren’t using the guidelines at all! O.o
Anonymous

I recognize the compassion-fatigue and ‘lighten up’ mentality that will cause some to be annoyed by my opinion.

I don’t understand why people who don’t have OCD find the compulsions associated with it so amusing. Living with OCD is indescribably painful for both the sufferer and those who love him/her. People who don’t have OCD will casually say “Oh, I’m so OCD,” as they straighten the knives and forks on a table even as I’m working hard to not count to five in a particular pattern in order to demonstrate to myself that I really, really don’t want to stab them with that same knife. That’s the fun, fun, fun of OCD: an endless round of compulsions as a response to intrusive thoughts that you’re not going to act out on. I wish people would come up with another code-word for their own desire for precision. My illness just isn’t funny to me.
Anonymous

Damn you Floyd. I came here to make the exact same reference. Interesting how our everyday speak for this kind of personality has changed from ‘anal retentive’ to OCD over the decades.
alrom

They should make them double-sided, one side in inches and the other in centimeters. I wouldn’t be able to get myself to chop my vegetables in customary units.
mgoat

Other people have already made this point well, but I feel I should add my voice to the weight of opinion against the crude reduction of OCD by using the word interchangeably with ‘anal retentive.’ There’s no need to go into why this kind of equivalence is totally off the mark, so I’ll just point out that there aren’t many mental illness that can be belittled so easily, and without censure. I’m a little surprised that the boingboing writers didn’t pick up on this as they seem generally well-attuned to and well aware of this brand of cheap mickey-taking.

My secondary objection is that, by naming the board after obsessive-compulsive disorder, sufferers who are currently enjoying a measure of success in overcoming the symptoms and resultant anxiety, and are in this way beginning to claw themselves back towards normal life, will be put off using this chopping board on account of trigger fears.

And yes, lots of OCD sufferers could use this chopping board without being triggered if it wasn’t named after their illness, because – and this may shock people who get their medical education from television – a lot of sufferers have no neatness-related symptoms at all.

Sorry for the rant. Just a bit disappointed, I guess.
bbreader

I spent years cooking for a living and I gotta say this is the kinda kitchen gizmo/crap that really just discourages people from learning to truly cook. For those with knife skills this is a joke and for those without it gives the wrong message. Good food is not about perfect little pieces. This thing is likely a kill-joy for anyone interested in learning to cook well.
- peterbruells
  
  Well, I’ve been cooking for fun and I’m reasonably fast with the knife – fought my parents a few time, when they wanted to make me use a gizmo (though I love gizmos) when a knife would do.
  
  And I’d love to have that board.
  
  But then again, I sometimes iron bills.
  
  @Anon OCD-sufferer Thanks for your reminder. @sdaris summed it up fine: It’s totally sufficient to call it a perfectionist’s cutting board, which it is.
desertisburning

Gosh, I totally agree with all those annoyed with the treatment of OCD, perfectionism, and detail-orientation as synonyms. So not the same thing.

That said, my diagnosed-and-living-with-OCD husband saw this and excitedly shouted “I want this!”
MichaelRN

Worthless without an OCD knife-sharpener.
ubarch

I am extremely offended that they did not include a double-log scale on this product.

As someone who prepares martinis by precisely carving olives using a Smith chart, I find this cutting board to be an abomination in the eyes of god.
Anonymous

This on a green cutting mat = actual utility
YarbroughFair

If it was invented by someone with O.C.D then I’m O.K. But if its just a way someone found to earn a quick buck, they’re probably designing disposable vomit bibs for anorexics as we speak.
Anonymous

The cutting board is really cool, but the same store also carries this product, which struck me as borderline racist (it’s a sushi service with a caricatured, slant-eyed Asian):

http://www.perpetualkid.com/sushi-service-for-two.aspx

So I’m not sure I’d want to buy from that store.
Anonymous

Can I get a version for lefties?
Mjay

It would be more OCD if there was an automated cutting mechanism. I wonder what an OCD salad would be like.
Rob Cruickshank

Someday, jokes about serious mental illnesses will be out of style, and this will be a collectors item.
Pantograph

I couldn’t bear to see knife marks ruining my pristine cutting board.
PaulR

Now, if only the disembodied hands can work on their cutting technique….

I’ve complained to restaurants that cut the veggies in to little pea-sized chunks. Unless they’re going into a soup.
tomfiglio

There’s a big difference between having an obsessive personality and suffering from OCD. OCD can ruin your life, it’s not just a harmless little idiosyncrasy. Forget the usual simplistic media portrayals (“Monk”, “As Good As It Gets”). The World Health Organisation ranks OCD as the tenth most disabling illness of any kind, in terms of lost earnings and diminished quality of life. The product described here reflects the belief that having OCD is funny. It’s not.
RobertBigelow

There are people who – for health reasons – eat a *very* restricted diet. A cutting board like this one can help them measure their portion sizes.

Also: a lot of people enjoy creating dishes requiring fine chopping, slicing and dicing but don’t want to use a food processor like a Cuisinart or go though the agony of cleaning it.
Rob Cruickshank

Also, (according to a brief bit of Wikipedia research) this is actually mocking suffers of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, rather than OCD. And there should be a clamp to hold the carrot.
- kmoser
  
  This thing really needs a mitre box attachment.
Anonymous

OCD, psycho, fat guy, white boy. These are the last prejudices that even the most liberal of folk ‘forget’ are hurtful to the people whom they describe.

That being said, this thing is great because I’ve been waiting for something to help me perfect a cold and exacting clone of Campbell’s vegetable soup of my own making.
chgoliz

Everyone brings their own issues to the table. In my case, what I noticed immediately was that the markings make it a right-handed cutting board.

If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have imagined it possible: handedness in a cutting board, of all things.
Anonymous

Wait, so can you use a kitchen knife on a cutting mat? Those mats heal by compressing the gash. Would that trap bacteria?
redstarr

The folks serving Howard Hughes probably would have LOVED this item.
Niklas

Any real OCD’s would use SI units when cooking and cutting!
- Anonymous
  
  Any real OCD’s would be offended by the name of the product and the perpetual reference to OCD as someone that just likes to be a bit neat.
Lobster

Pretty cool, but not a big fan of salads. Even if they’re in metric.
- Niklas
  
  You could cut sausage and meats on it if vegetables are not your thing.
  - AlmostLucy
    
    There are arguments for and against, but raw meat on a wooden cutting board is not the best idea.
    - Niklas
      
      I cut all my meat on cutting boards made of wood. It is better from both health, environmental and aesthetical perspective. The only real argument against using wood and meat together is if you are sloppy and leave the juices to soak all the time. With normal kitchen hygiene plastic cutting boards will be worse than wood.
    - nox
      
      Actually, you’re better off with wood unless you frequently replace your plastic boards.
      
      http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/cutting_board.htm
nemryn

Does it have guides for measuring tablespoons of butter?
Brainspore

It looks like a wooden version of the self-healing cutting mats I use to make comps for graphic design work. It had never occurred to me that I could just take one of those out of my studio and use it in the kitchen.